I won't speak to the article, but I can say if anyone does not think "death panels" exist as the normal course of business at insurance companies,
then you would not be very well-informed. I have both lived it in my, the life of my parents, and via my wife's work at a hospital where she deals
with insurer denials.

Denying care to create profit -- aka death panels -- IS the entire business model of a health insurance company. This is why it is insane to put a
private company between the doctor and the patient and why the only sane, humane and intelligent AND cost effective system is single payer. Anything
else is laughable.

I am a capitalist, but that does not mean I believe capitalism is the best model for all services. For health, public safety, the military, national
infrastructure use of capitalism is foolish, dangerous and wasteful.

The U.S. is the ONLY developed company in the world with a healthcare structured, literally, around the concept that a dying child is a place to look
for profit.

They don't need "Death Panels". I read the ObamaCare Bill they passed.

These new Insurance Exchanges everyone must sign into will file claims with the US Treasury to get reimbursed for healthcare costs. The Bill states
the maximum they can get from the Treasury Account for each person is $90,000.

They can't get anymore. So automatically each person will be rationed up to $90,000......hope you don''t need heart surgery after 2014.....or Chemo
treatment.....Chemo Treatment may exceed $90,000 by 2014.

Quit listening to internet boards and download the ObamaCare Bill they passed....read it for yourself.

There are no death panels. This is a fact. But you can't get through the right wing closed circuit ecosystem. These people do not fact check, they do
not go to outside sources. They perpetuate lies on top of lies, on top of lies. This is why to this day, even though death panels have been debunked,
they still believe it.

This is why to this day, even though the president has proven beyond any and all reasonable doubt that he was born in Hawaii as he has always claimed,
there are those that continue to believe the birther lie.

WND is the biggest perpetrator of false information on the web, they don't print real stories, they just churn out lies after lies after lies, and
these people believe this tripe with all their hearts because it fits their own personal narrative of what the world should be.

You won't get through to them, all you can do, is present the facts as they really are, and hope that someone that isn't completely brainwashed by
the lie factory reads it and understands.

Originally posted by Surfrat
OBAMA ADVISER ADMITS: 'WE NEED DEATH PANELS' www.wnd.com...
A top Democrat strategist and donor who served as President Obama’s lead auto-industry adviser recently conceded that the rationing of heath
services under Obamacare is “inevitable.”
Steven Rattner advocated that such rationing should target elderly patients, while stating, “We need death panels.”

And now for the actual article...which you failed to provide...

Beyond Obamacare

By STEVEN RATTNER

Published: September 16, 2012

WE need death panels.

Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the
exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.

But in the pantheon of toxic issues — the famous “third rails” of American politics — none stands taller than overtly acknowledging that
elderly Americans are not entitled to every conceivable medical procedure or pharmaceutical.

Most notably, President Obama’s estimable Affordable Care Act regrettably includes severe restrictions on any reduction in Medicare services or
increase in fees to beneficiaries. In 2009, Sarah Palin’s rant about death panels even forced elimination from the bill of a provision to offer
end-of-life consultations.

(A) He is speaking of how Medicare should not pay for every expensive test or treatment that a Physician can dream up, knowing that Medicare will
re-imburse. That is not healthy for the patient and it inflates Medicare costs.

(B) He explicitly says that Pres. Obama's ACA "Obamacare" has no provisions that speak to this...mostly due to Republican Opposition.

BTW - World Net Daily is trash...always has been...Birther central. You can keep your opinions, but you'd be better served to look beyond what they
feed you.

America is already bankrupt, if you think care will not be denied based on our financial situation you are just naive.

I think many of the elderly go to the doctor with a sore hip and end up with 3 MRIs and a battery of tests that they don't need...because the
hospital gets paid mucho dollars for every test whether it is needed or not...and Medicaid pays for everything, where an insurance company will deny
payment.

I think the practice is both a drain on Medicaid AND a risk to the patient.

It is the reason why costs are out of hand here in the USA...why we are the most expensive, but we rank low on outcomes...Cuz hospitals and doctors
run tests that they might not need to and they get paid well to do it.

I agree we should do a much better job of overseeing it, but in the end it boils down to greed. Greed will be with us until the end of time. National
Healthcare will just create more opportunities to scam the system and will cost even more in theft, which will cost lives.

He's right. If the "Affordable" Care Act (already being proven a complete joke of a name) is going to continue to exist, rationing is the only way
to keep it going. Either that or raise taxes even more to support it. The same taxation that Obama promise not to do, yet did anyway.

Exactly when did Obama raise taxes? Please, send me the link to the magic piece of paper that grants the president sole power to raise and lower
taxes.

Seriously, where is this magic tax hike that the president alone signed into law without congress even looking at it.

My guess? There isn't one, and this is just more right wing media propaganda, propaganda without any fact to it whatsoever.

So, please, send me the link to this magic tax hike that Obama himself put on the American people without any input or involvement from Congress.

Of course, NOT raising taxes is going to hurt this country more than keeping the Bush Era Tax Cuts going. Remember, these are unpaid for tax cuts,
with no cuts in spending to offset the hit to the budget. YET, somehow, conservatives think that lowering taxes continuously without curbing spending
(hint military spending) is all OK.

But hey, keep listening to the right wing pundits lie to you constantly, keep believing the bull, no matter how absurd, or how easily debunked.

Don't tell me we've so quickly forgotten the outright tax of rather measurable size built directly into the Obamacare package? I know the White
House is probably still cussing a blue streak that the Super Court won't let them call it anything else. It is what it is and many of us called it
that outright, back when it was still laughingly referred to as a fee or some other nice sounding name.

Thats quite a tax in total numbers too. I know it's become the latest fad to wish the poor house upon the rich, but there need to be some perspective
things built into this. Those who create the jobs are not necessarily deserving of special treatment, but outright breaking them through taxes from
all sides is NOT how we come down much further from an 8.1% Unemp rate, I'm thinking. Whose left to hire folks at the numbers required just to keep
things even?

Ah, you mean the part of the Affordable Care Act that was passed by both the house of Representatives and the Senate before being signed into law by
the President? You mean H.R. 3590 that was sponsored by Rep Rangel, Charles B. [NY-15] and co sponsored by 39 others none of which were the
President?

Again, if you please, please show me the magic piece of paper that endows the president SOLELY with the power to raise and lower taxes without
anything to do with Congress.

You all seem to love to blame him for raising taxes, yet, it seems that you can't come up with anything that he has done solely to raise taxes one
cent.

I've never claimed the President could raise taxes unilaterally. He can raise fees and impose that sort of thing, or more accurately, his Executive
branch Cabinet Departments can. Although for new taxes that didn't exist before or statutory changes to the tax code at the federal level, of course
you're right on that. The bill must start in the House, pass the Senate, be reconciled by the two and then go on to the President.

Perhaps that is why the U.S. hasn't seen a proper federal budget get through that process since the carry-over budget from Bush. It's a wild ride
running the Government without one in any formal structure eh? A trillion plus per year wild......but that is supposed to slow down after the
Election according to the White House Budget proposal for fiscal 2013.

Page 6 of that goes into detailed breakdown of the revenue coming in by source (What kind of tax) through 2022. Over all, thats probably a great
summary package of the overall numbers and they aren't terribly pretty as the current Government projects our future to be.

However, if we're going to claim that Barack Obama had little influence...if not outright and direct hands on guidance to the major points of the
Obamacare package, I'd love to hear the White House say that one.

The tax written into it is EVERY much his as it is Pelosi's and Reids. He
owns this one, succeed or fail and pretty much himself. He's insured he's the center of attention on it. That means all of it. Well, it's his.
Happy New Year when taxmageddon hits. It should be a hoot.

First of all I skipped WND and went straight to the source.
here and the first paragraph reads:

WE need death panels.

Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the
exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.

Pretty damning stuff right there and all on its own. But the article then goes on to discuss the reasoning behind the shocking and blunt statements.
It is not a call for death panels, rather a call to try and find fiscal responsibility for the looming crisis in rising medical costs - I'll (
possibly ) term the coin "hospitalgeddon".

The idea offered is that we tend, in the US, to want every possible measure taken when losing an elderly loved one. We tend to want EVERYTHING done -
even if the doctor already knows it is a lost cause:

Medicare needs to take a cue from Willie Sutton, who reportedly said he robbed banks because that’s where the money was. The big money in
Medicare is not to be found in Mr. Ryan’s competition or Mr. Obama’s innovation, but in reducing the cost of treating people in the last year of
life, which consumes more than a quarter of the program’s budget.

No one wants to lose an aging parent. And with price out of the equation, it’s natural for patients and their families to try every treatment,
regardless of expense or efficacy. But that imposes an enormous societal cost that few other nations have been willing to bear. Many countries whose
health care systems are regularly extolled — including Canada, Australia and New Zealand — have systems for rationing care.

Take Britain, which provides universal coverage with spending at proportionately almost half of American levels. Its National Institute for Health and
Clinical Excellence uses a complex quality-adjusted life year system to put an explicit value (up to about $48,000 per year) on a treatment’s
ability to extend life.

Death panel? No more so than any triage or care advisement in a hospital already happening today. How many of us keep relatives alive for days, week,
or even months beyond viability? I recently had a death in the family (last week) and it took that relatives more immediate family days to decide to
"turn off the machines".

That's really all this article addresses.

Oh, and FTR it is also an op ed piece from a person with no medical knowledge... an economist.

Steven Rattner, a contributing opinion writer, was a counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration.

So he's even one step further removed from his field of expertise. He's a numbers guy, not a medicine guy.

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